1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic transaction system which electronically makes requests to suppliers or vendors for estimates and orders for commodities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in an organization, requests for estimates and orders for commodities by an enterprise department office to suppliers or vendors with whom the organization does business are first approved by a superior officer in the office and then sent to the general affairs office in the organization. The general affairs office sorts out the requests and sends the requests to each vendor in the form of documents. Upon receipt of an estimate request or an order request from the general affairs office, each vendor makes an estimate for the cost of delivering commodities, the term of delivery and if the commodities are kept in stock, or arranges delivery and makes out a bill, as required. In the case of an estimate request, a reply is sent in writing to the requesting general affairs office. In the case of an order request, the requested commodity and a bill are delivered to the general affairs office. The bill is counted towards the organizational costs by the general affairs office and the commodities are delivered to the requesting office. The results of an estimate request are also sent from the general affairs office to the requesting office.
In the conventional system, however, after an estimate request or an order request has been issued to a vendor, the only way of confirming that the vendor has received the request without fail is to inquire of the vendor by telephone.
In addition, since all matters are processed using paper, time consuming work is required. The task of the general affairs office that handles requests made by all the offices in an organization becomes complicated.
Furthermore, delivered articles or services are sometimes not inspected for a long time in the organization, delaying payment to vendors. In such a case, the general affairs office will have to carry out the extra work of handling many inquiries from the vendors.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a system which permits requestsxe2x80x94either estimate requests or order requestsxe2x80x94to vendors and for conditions related to requests to be understood easily, by communicating electronic data.
According to an aspect of the present invention,there is provided an electronic transaction system for making a request for estimating of making a request for ordering an article or service required by an organization to a vendor outside the organization comprising: a processing unit installed inside the organization and having input means for inputting a request and inputting information related to the request on the basis of information sent from the vendor after the request has been made; and a management unit for managing communications between the processing unit in the organization and a processing unit in the vendor company, the management unit including: information entry means installed inside the organization for entering data input by the input means of the processing unit in the organization; transmission means for transmitting the request entered into the information entry means installed in the organization and request-related data input later as requested by the processing unit in the vendor company; and entry means installed outside the organization for transmitting data used for the vendor to make a reply to the request as requested by the processing unit in the vendor company and entering data input and sent by the processing unit in the vendor company.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic transaction system for making a request for ordering or a request for estimating articles or services required by an organization to vendors outside the organization comprising: first processing units installed in department offices of the organization for inputting requests and a second processing unit installed inside the organization for managing requests made by the first processing units, the second processing unit including management means for managing dates of delivery of articles or services input from processing units installed in the vendor companies and acceptance processing means for deciding, for each first processing unit that makes a new estimate request or order request, the presence or absence of order requests made by that first processing unit for which acceptance inspection of an article or service delivered has not been made within a predetermined period of time after its date of delivery and refusing the new request when the acceptance inspection has not been made.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic transaction management unit for managing communications between a processing unit installed inside an organization for making a request for estimating or a request for ordering an article or service and a processing unit installed in a vendor company outside the organization comprising: information entry means installed inside the organization for entering data input by the input means of the processing unit in the organization; transmission means for transmitting the request entered into the information entry means installed in the organization and request-related data input later as requested by the processing unit in the vendor company; and entry means installed outside the organization for transmitting data used for the vendor to make a reply to the request as requested by the processing unit in the vendor company and entering data input and sent by the processing unit in the vendor company.
According to the present invention, the management unit presents request conditions in such a way that they can be accessed from outside via a network, allowing outside vendors to easily know what the ordering organization needs. Thus, the vendors can immediately accommodate requests made by the orderer and use the request conditions to understand the conditions in which commodities and services have been delivered. This will simplify office work and reduce troubles in business.
The ordering organization makes requests public, which will provide the same advantages as a public tender. For this reason, the organization can receive estimates from two or more vendors and choose a vendor who provides the most advantageous conditions from among the vendors.
Conventionally, delivered articles or services are sometimes not inspected for a long time by the organization, delaying the payment to vendors. In such a case, the number of inquires from the vendors increases, which results in extra work for the handling of these inquiries. According to the present invention, this problem can be solved.